My experience with a go teacher
Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2014 3:20 pm
Hello everyone, some time ago I began taking lessons from a stronger player (in order to improve). I wanted to share my experience here with anyone interested in it.
I am 28 years old. I started go maybe 9 years ago, while still in university. I improved relatively quickly up to 6 kyu, but then got stuck there. I was a bit stronger in handi games, maybe 5 kyu, but not in normal games. In hindsight, I think my way of studying was not optimal. I did focus a bit too much on joseki. I played mostly handicap games. I also did tsumego etc., however.
Well, I was very annoyed with the situation, that I didn't improve, so I stopped go. After a while, I started go again, but again I was still stuck at 6 kyu. So this time I decided to get lessons from a stronger player to become stronger. I checked the web pages of Franz-Josef Dickhut and Robert Jasiek (two strong german amateur players) on the modalities and for some reason I decided to try and pay for a lesson from Robert.
The lesson took place on KGS and consisted of a game for 1 hour and then a discussion. The game was without handi. So it was very interesting, I made several big mistakes but was allowed to take back moves.
After the game, Robert pointed out my weaknesses. So first of all, too lazy to read out life and death situations and connection of groups. Often, I would think "These stones will be alive somehow" but then they weren't. It was an attitude thing. But Robert also said I shoud do more tsumego because for my level I was not good enough at L&D. The next Topic was the Thing with sente and gote. Robert made the suggestion that I should play sente moves before gote moves, and I agreed. The next thing was counting and endgame. This was totally my weak point. I would play endgame moves way too small, gote moves before sente moves as stated before, and thus lose points on every move. There were also some endgame techniques and tesujis that I didn't know at all.
So after I was confronted with my weaknesses, I was a bit...down. But at least I could work on it. And Robert's first point, my attitude in the game, beeing to lazy to read out things, was true.
So I took a few lessons and improved rather quickly. I improved on my fuseki and I learned some middle-game and endgame techniques and tesujis and got rid of some bad habits. I got used to count during games. I think I improved the most in the endgame and got in a few months to KGS 1 kyu - 1dan, real life 1 kyu.
I would say that the lessons were totally worth it. Robert can be a strict teacher, but this is a good thing^^ The KGS Chat is suboptimal for questions and answers, but it is manageable. So maybe if your stuck at some level and you cannot figure out why, you should try to figure out what your main weaknesses are (Kind of obvious, now that I think about it).
Well I hope this long post was interesting for some people. Cheers
I am 28 years old. I started go maybe 9 years ago, while still in university. I improved relatively quickly up to 6 kyu, but then got stuck there. I was a bit stronger in handi games, maybe 5 kyu, but not in normal games. In hindsight, I think my way of studying was not optimal. I did focus a bit too much on joseki. I played mostly handicap games. I also did tsumego etc., however.
Well, I was very annoyed with the situation, that I didn't improve, so I stopped go. After a while, I started go again, but again I was still stuck at 6 kyu. So this time I decided to get lessons from a stronger player to become stronger. I checked the web pages of Franz-Josef Dickhut and Robert Jasiek (two strong german amateur players) on the modalities and for some reason I decided to try and pay for a lesson from Robert.
The lesson took place on KGS and consisted of a game for 1 hour and then a discussion. The game was without handi. So it was very interesting, I made several big mistakes but was allowed to take back moves.
After the game, Robert pointed out my weaknesses. So first of all, too lazy to read out life and death situations and connection of groups. Often, I would think "These stones will be alive somehow" but then they weren't. It was an attitude thing. But Robert also said I shoud do more tsumego because for my level I was not good enough at L&D. The next Topic was the Thing with sente and gote. Robert made the suggestion that I should play sente moves before gote moves, and I agreed. The next thing was counting and endgame. This was totally my weak point. I would play endgame moves way too small, gote moves before sente moves as stated before, and thus lose points on every move. There were also some endgame techniques and tesujis that I didn't know at all.
So after I was confronted with my weaknesses, I was a bit...down. But at least I could work on it. And Robert's first point, my attitude in the game, beeing to lazy to read out things, was true.
So I took a few lessons and improved rather quickly. I improved on my fuseki and I learned some middle-game and endgame techniques and tesujis and got rid of some bad habits. I got used to count during games. I think I improved the most in the endgame and got in a few months to KGS 1 kyu - 1dan, real life 1 kyu.
I would say that the lessons were totally worth it. Robert can be a strict teacher, but this is a good thing^^ The KGS Chat is suboptimal for questions and answers, but it is manageable. So maybe if your stuck at some level and you cannot figure out why, you should try to figure out what your main weaknesses are (Kind of obvious, now that I think about it).
Well I hope this long post was interesting for some people. Cheers
Congratulations on being able to break through and reach a new level. 
)